HONG KONG: Asia-Pacific's ever-expanding mobile phone market has seen regional brands increase their market share at the expense of Apple, the US technology giant, according to the latest analysis of quarterly shipments.
Apple fell out of the top five players in the region for the first time in the face of competition from Samsung, its South Korean rival, and a series of low-cost Chinese brands, including Lenovo, Huawei and ZTE, which have been buoyed by falling component costs.
The Asia-Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker from the International Data Corporation, the consumer technology researchers, also found Apple's share of the Chinese tablet market fell to 28% from 49% a year ago.
Samsung almost doubled its share of the Chinese tablet market to 11% after quadrupling shipments of its Android-based devices to 571k while tablet makers with a market share under 1% increased their shipments to 50%, up from 36% last year.
Overall, 119m units were shipped in the Asia-Pacific region during the second quarter of 2013, up 10% from the previous quarter and up 75% from last year.
Melissa Chau, the senior research manager at IDC, said many local competitors were now aggressively scaling up, competing on both price and hardware specifications, such as bigger screens.
"We are now hitting a place where there are smartphones for every price point, where the masses will benefit from the slew of players bringing in more options," she added.
However, IDC analyst Dickie Chang expressed confidence that Apple could be optimistic about the forthcoming launch of its new iPad in China.
He told the Financial Times that "if Apple cut the price of previous generation products…more consumers would love to buy the Apple iPad".
Apple fell out of the top five players in the region for the first time in the face of competition from Samsung, its South Korean rival, and a series of low-cost Chinese brands, including Lenovo, Huawei and ZTE, which have been buoyed by falling component costs.
The Asia-Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker from the International Data Corporation, the consumer technology researchers, also found Apple's share of the Chinese tablet market fell to 28% from 49% a year ago.
Samsung almost doubled its share of the Chinese tablet market to 11% after quadrupling shipments of its Android-based devices to 571k while tablet makers with a market share under 1% increased their shipments to 50%, up from 36% last year.
Overall, 119m units were shipped in the Asia-Pacific region during the second quarter of 2013, up 10% from the previous quarter and up 75% from last year.
Melissa Chau, the senior research manager at IDC, said many local competitors were now aggressively scaling up, competing on both price and hardware specifications, such as bigger screens.
"We are now hitting a place where there are smartphones for every price point, where the masses will benefit from the slew of players bringing in more options," she added.
However, IDC analyst Dickie Chang expressed confidence that Apple could be optimistic about the forthcoming launch of its new iPad in China.
He told the Financial Times that "if Apple cut the price of previous generation products…more consumers would love to buy the Apple iPad".
Data sourced from IDC, Financial Times; additional content by Warc staff
